


Court Orders

by graveyardparade



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Dogma Deserved Better, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s04e07 Darkness on Umbara, fix-it (ish)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveyardparade/pseuds/graveyardparade
Summary: As Krell's body lays cooling in an otherwise empty jail cell and Dogma gets arrested for doing what every brother had known was good and just, Rex sets to making his wrongs right: he can't save those who have already died, but he might be able to save Dogma.He just needs to get himself arrested first.





	1. The Arrest

**Author's Note:**

> I have a feeling that fics of this kind have been written twenty times over, but after an arc with as many loose ends as the Umbara arc, who has it in them to resist? Not me! This takes place immediately after carnage of krell (s04e10) and focuses on the aftermath, clones as individuals and the dubious position they occupy in the universe.

Rex had failed.

There are men who would argue that idea to their dying breath, good men, loyal men who would have - and had - gladly followed Rex to their probable deaths, capable of looking at even the atrocities of the last few days and still seeing someone worthy of their trust and respect, but Rex knows better. It strikes him like a punch to the gut as he sees Dogma being led away in cuffs. Dogma had done the right thing, but it was Rex who should have fired the killing strike, just as he should have protected his men, just as he should have done his duty and protected the Republic, something that requires far more than simply following orders.

He had been a little like Dogma, back in the day. He's older now, smarter, and he should have known better than to send his men into the jaws of death again and again, known better to just go along with orders of execution as though the only choices available to him were to sacrifice others or fall upon that blade himself, should have known better than to let his blasted hands tremble, to have his own neglect result in the punishment of an innocent man. More than that, he had failed to think, _really_ think.

He swore an oath to the Republic and there hasn’t been a single day when he’s regretted that. Over time, over all of the fighting, all of the death, all of the horrors he had seen and forced himself to silently move past, he had forgotten what the Republic was. It was the people. And that included his men, whether the people of the Republic liked it or not.

He knows what he has to do. Rex takes a deep breath of the Umbaran air, acrid and suffocating and, straightening his shoulders, steps into the transport where the rest of the 501st is waiting. They’re lined up, waiting for him to say something before they can go get some well-earned rest, and Rex knows that he should have some words of inspiration for them, some reason to keep on moving. They deserve a long speech. They deserve an apology.

They get neither. 

“I know it’s been a long, hard mission, men, so I won’t belabour the point. You should be proud of your conduct here on Umbara - each and every one of you. You all worked yourselves to the bone for your brothers, and for the Republic. We have suffered great losses here, but none of that - _none_ of it was on you. Now, it’s well past time you lot get some rest, and that’s exactly what you’re going to do. Dismissed.”

With that, he turns on his heels and walks away as quickly as he can manage without it looking as though he’s blatantly fleeing them, though he can still hear the questioning murmurs of his brothers behind him, doubtlessly wondering why he’d been so short with them, why he had acknowledged Krell and their fallen brothers so little. He regrets that it’s necessary (he seems to regret more and more things that seem necessary as time goes on), but he only has so much time at his disposal. He makes a beeline for his quarters, momentarily grateful that Captains get the boon of their own quarters and, without hesitation, begins to write. He doesn’t look up from his datapad until he’s finished and even then he stops to read it over, making sure that every word is perfect. He may well be writing up his own death sentence, he reasons, but that’s no reason not to do it _properly_. The ludicrousness of poring over such a thing to make sure that there are no grammatical errors doesn’t escape him, but he has little time to spare even for a bit of gallows humour.

It’s only when his eyes begin to ache and his vision swims after having spent too long upright and awake that he gives up the ghost and sends the report off, sending a longing look towards his bunk before he reluctantly drags his weary bones over to the 'fresher. He’ll regret not washing up too much to allow himself sleep now, and besides, he wants the stench of Umbara off of him already. He’s not certain whether it’s in his mind or not, the way that the putrid air seems to stick to him like a cloud, the smell of his brothers’ blood lingering in his sinuses, the stinging, burning scent of a blaster bolt cutting through flesh --

No, Rex thinks, bracing himself against the doorway, forcing himself to remain standing, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his jaw. No use dwelling on that. He’s got his duty, and he can’t accomplish it if he continues down that path. There will be time for that later - or, perhaps, so little time that it won’t matter in the long run. As he makes his way unsteadily towards the sonic, he spares a moment to glance into the small mirror hung on the wall, somewhat dismayed by the sight he sees there. He’s not a man frequently given to vanity (very few clones are, considering they share the same body, the same face; there are special cases like Kix who's special in more ways than one), but there’s no denying the fact that he looks bad.

Or… no, not bad, not necessarily. _Old_. He is a man of twelve years and older than most of his brothers, true, but he knows he ought to look like a human of twenty-four. He doesn’t. There are dark, pronounced circles underneath his eyes, and his skin is pale from too much time spent in armour, away from the sun, and his skin seems somehow drawn across his skull, as though all of that tightness he feels wound up in his chest had nowhere to go but out. He takes a moment to trace the furrow between his brows and the care-worn lines on his forehead. There have been no clones that have died of old age, not yet, and he can’t help wondering what their collective accelerated aging is doing to them, if it’s speeding up, or if it's the simple fact that stress can do terrible, terrible things to a man. Even if the war ends, how long will they have before years of tireless work and turmoil take their toll? How much of their lives would they have left for themselves, to live as they will instead of struggling to move forward? He shakes his head, turning away from his reflection before stripping out of his armour and blacks, methodically stacking them so he can step into the sonic and engage in that age-old tradition of staring at the wall and thinking about nothing at all until he’s clean.

As he steps out, he glances at the time, then settles in his bunk. It’s disappointing but not surprising when he finds that he can’t sleep despite the exhaustion anchoring him to his bed. He closes his eyes. He waits.

Somehow, the time it takes to get back to Coruscant both seems endless and passes by in the blink of an eye. As the ship lands, Rex shoves his way through the troops lined up by the exit, more than ready to get out and return to their barracks, though he can hear the buzz of worried troopers, fearing the worst after their coup. “Out of the way, troopers,” he says. “I go first.”

There's a couple of nervous titters. They know Rex always goes first, but that's on a battlefield, not returning to the closest thing they have to a home next to Kamino. That being said, Rex knows and trusts his men and their common sense. He'd be shocked if they weren't expecting the whole lot of them to be court martialed. Rex doesn't take the deep breath that he wants to, not wanting them to see his trepidation more than they already have; if everything's gone according to plan, his men will never have to see the inside of a courtroom, nor will they have to return to Kamino in disgrace. 

He steps out of the ship and into the blinding light of the hangar, his troopers neatly lined up behind him. His eyes fall onto a group of troopers waiting for them and... 

Ah. Shock cuffs. One pair, and one pair only. Behind his helmet, Rex smiles. 

The trooper steps forward, his voice indistinguishable from any other clone’s through his armour’s annunciator, tone stilted, saying what's required of him and nothing else. “CT-7567 - Captain Rex. You are under arrest for treason, the illegal imprisonment of your commanding officer, and aiding and abetting in the murder of a Jedi.”

Unease ripples through the troopers, but only one steps forward. “Bantha shit!” Fives cries out, stepping in front of Rex. “We did what was _necessary_! He killed clones - our brothers! You can't arrest the captain for --”

“Fives!” Rex says, voice like a whip. “Stand down, trooper!”

“But sir--”

For a moment, Rex feels love and pride burn in his gut for his brother. Fives is a good trooper, but more than that, he's a good man. He's well aware that Fives must still be angry with him for his cowardice in the face of Krell until things became untenable, but nothing can fight the man’s loyalty to his brothers or his sense of right and wrong. He would have never expected it from the moment he met him, youthful and inexperienced as he was. Nevertheless, Fives had quickly grown to be one of his finest troopers, and one whose judgment he wishes he listened to long before things came to this. 

“No buts.” Rex pauses, then decides against leaving without another word. “Fives, listen to me. I didn't save our brothers back on Umbara. Let me save them _here_.” Not couldn't. Didn't. He had every opportunity to take action against Krell as their brothers fell in an impossible battle and didn't. He needs to make this right, if not only for his own conscience, then for what remains of the 501st. 

For all of Fives' many, many skills, he's always been singularly awful at hiding his emotions and while his unhappiness all but radiates off of him, he doesn't speak again. From across the hangar, Rex can see the 212th - Cody included - standing there, watching it happen. When Cody begins to step forward (and oh, he can practically see Cody's expression in the same way that they all figure out how to read each other's buckets in their own way), he holds one hand up and thankfully Cody gets the message loud and clear. He halts, though Rex can still see his body poised with suspended motion, just waiting to get out. Rex scans the rest of the hangar before stepping forward, noting with a cravenly sort of relief that neither the men he's come to regard as his Generals nor his Commander are present. He's not sure whether he fears that they would attempt to halt his arrest without a thought or if they would step forward in favour of it. It's an uncomfortable thought. He's never doubted his Jedi before, and he doesn't think that this is doubt, not necessarily, but... they killed a _Jedi_. Would General Skywalker stay steadfast to his soldiers, as he always has, or would he look upon them in scorn for their betrayal? Regardless, they're not here. It's just clones here.

He removes his helmet and holds it out to Fives. "Hang onto this for me, trooper," he says, lightly. "Can't say I trust the wardens not to bang it around."

Knowing full well that his helmet's gone through a hell of a lot more than a couple of careless wardens, Fives wordlessly takes Rex's helmet, some complicated expression on his face that Rex can't quite read. He just hopes that the members of the 501st know what that gesture means: it's not a memento of a dead man, but a promise that he intends to come back and claim what's truly his at some point. He wants to turn around and say something to them, some assurance that he's looking out for them and that they'll be fine in his absence. In the end he says nothing, just faces forward, sets his jaw, thrusts his shoulders back and steps towards the arresting officer, hands held freely out in front of him. "Better get a move on," he says. "Your commanding officer's going to be expecting you - and me."

"Yessir," the man says, grasping onto Rex's wrists and tucking them behind his back before cuffing him. It's an odd and altogether unpleasant experience being led out of there, one officer behind him and being flanked by two more, but he bears it stoically. The last thing that the 501st needs to see is him being led away, cowed and defeated. No - no, even if he is executed, and he hopes dearly that it won't come to that, he'll face it with the pride of a man who knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’s right.


	2. Squeak

As it turns out, being arrested is a wholly unpleasant experience and, for all that Rex has arrested plenty of others, not one that he would recommend. The guards that had originally arrested him with treason on their breath still treated him with the decency and respect of very, very confused men following orders against a respected, decorated officer whose status has skyrocketed to being nigh legendary. _These_ men aren’t clones that have contributed to the war effort, however, and have very little respect for tales of valour within their cloistered lives, as trapped by the prison they work in as the prisoners they guard.

The brothers processing him now look at him like he’s little more than a piece of meat, a minor inconvenience in the humdrum of their day. Oh, they’re certainly dutiful enough, and Rex can’t list a single reg that they’re directly breaking, but from being stripped of his armour to a cavity search and pat-down to taking the requisite holographs and the scanning and the paperwork, they seem to stare right past him, saying the word “treason” as dully as though they were bringing him in for collecting droid fingers.

It’s only after he’s been searched, holographed, and dressed in the bleak prison greys of those that have been detained but not yet convicted that he’s shoved into the last room for the last dregs of the paperwork to be completed. His guard pushes him in, and he stumbles in in a haze, having long since resigned himself to simply getting through the process as quickly and painlessly as possible. When he hears a gasp he finally looks up, paying attention to more than the seemingly endless arrays of grey floor and is astonished when he finds himself looking into a familiar bucket. “Squeak!”

He tears off his helmet. “Sir! You remember me!” A delighted smile spreads across Squeak’s face, open and disarming. He has three tidy horizontal lines shaved into both of his temples and, just below those, three tidy horizontal purple lines tattooed down his cheeks. But more than that, Rex remembers the battle in which they had nearly lost him in. Poor kid got caught in the blast of a mine, damn near tore half of his body away from him. Only Kix's snarled insistence that he could still be saved had seen Squeak come away from the ordeal alive - that and hours and hours of toil. There’s still ugly, knotted scarring crawling up from his chest and webbing across the lower half of his face, a horrible reminder of how close he had come to dying. He’d been sent away after they couldn’t save his arm or his leg and, as is typical for soldiers injured that badly, they had never heard from him again.

“I don’t forget one of our own. You know that.” Rex shakes his head in disbelief, glancing down at the ground to hide his own grin though he doubts it’s to much success. “It’s good to see you. I thought you got sent back to Kamino.”

“Nossir. As it turns out, they needed someone with my knowledge of the systems here, so I got fitted with cybernetics and sent back. Apparently we're a bit short staffed.”

Finally some good news. It’s small in the face of what he’s about the encounter, but Squeak was - _is_ \- a good soldier, and a good man, and Rex knew that decommissioned clones didn’t face a good life. There were always rumours that the Kaminoans couldn’t see the use in a defective clone and simply killed them, but no way to verify or deny that claim. Once you get decommissioned in Kamino for good, the chances of you ever talking to any of your original squad again were slim to none. Nowadays, injured clones are being sent out or fitted with prosthetics more and more as their numbers begin to flag; the waste of cybernetic resources (as the more financially minded Senators call it) have been deemed far less costly than the creation, upkeep and wait for new soldiers. “Good. You ought to contact some of the other men, meet them at 79s. I can think of a few that would be happy to hear from you again.” And, he thinks to himself, they could use whatever boost in morale they could get.

“I was planning on it. Time just has a habit of slipping away from you, around here. But… but sir, what are _you_ doing here?” Squeak looks down at the paperwork, then back up again at Rex with the wide eyes of a shiny despite the fact that he hasn’t been a rookie for a very, very long time. He leans forward and, as though they aren’t the only two people in the room, hisses, “It says you’re here for treason!”

“It does,” Rex says, equitably enough.

“But that can’t be true!””

Rex considers this. “That's going to be up to the Senate to decide,” he finally says, hoping he sounds more confident about it than he feels. “But if you're asking me if I betrayed my brothers, or if I betrayed the Republic, the answer is and will always be no.”

Squeak nods, still looking mildly anxious at the prospect of the whole affair, but there's an unmistakable glimmer of relief in his eyes. It's folly, Rex knows. His job is to treat the people who walk through these doors as criminals, and after all that had happened with Slick, you shouldn't trust anyone with that sort of wholeheartedness, especially after they've already been arrested. He's glad for it anyway. 

“Now, soldier, you might not be on the battlefield anymore, but you still have a job to do. I believe you’re supposed to be escorting me to a cell right about now.”

Squeak looks like he’d rather bolt on the spot, treasonous or not. Rex has the sneaking suspicion that if he were to ask that Squeak sneak him out of here and find a safe place to hide, he’d do it in a heartbeat, and he’d take a few of the men from the 501st along with him. But he doesn’t ask, so Squeak reluctantly puts his bucket back on. “All right. Sir, I -- “

“Not sir.”

“Sorry?”

“As long as I’m here, I’m a prisoner. Won’t do for you to be calling a prisoner ‘sir’, will it?” 

“You aren’t making this any easier on me,” Squeak says with a quiet huff, shaking his head, a hint of humour in his voice. “You’d better not make me call you by a _number_.”

Rex very carefully doesn’t think about a pointy finger being jabbed into his chest, a sneered _CT-7567_. He doesn’t smile. “No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Uh… right.” Squeak coughs. “Well, Rex, come with me. I’ll take you to your cell.” 

Rex follows along silently as he’s loaded onto one of the hoverplatforms and they’re sent into the air past cell after identical cell. The impersonal nature of the whole affair is supposed to drain prisoners of their desire to rebel but the whole thing reminds him oddly of being back on Kamino, lines of tidy pods as clean and clinical as can be, the strict organization of the whole affair, the sense of being shuttled from place to place without any time to think. As he stares at the lines of orange forcefields, Squeak keeps talking. “You get your own cell until you’re convicted. They don’t want you being influenced, or… compromised.” There’s a tenseness to his shoulder - his left shoulder, Rex realizes. He still walks a little crooked, unused to his cybernetic limbs, but the parts of him that are flesh and blood are just as demonstrative as ever. He’s worried. “You still get to spend time in the common areas, like the rec room and the mess after all of the paperwork’s gone through. It might be a couple of days. But… Rex, they don’t much like clones here.”

No, Rex supposes. They wouldn’t. “I can take care of myself. There’s just one more thing. Another member of Torrent Company’s here -”

“- oh no, not Fives!”

Oh, if Rex gets out of here whole, he’s _absolutely_ going to tell Fives about that snap judgment. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, all things considered. “No, no - not Fives. Dogma.”

“ _Dogma_?” 

“I did tell you I didn’t betray the Republic, didn't I? Now, I don’t want you getting yourself into any trouble, kid, but if you can? Do me a favour and give him fair warning. The last thing he needs is to get involved in a brawl.”

“I will. You have my word,” Squeak says with an immediacy that makes Rex want to wince. He leans over and unclips Rex’s cuffs before dispelling the orange force field separating his cell from the rest of the prison and, almost gently, pushes Rex in. “Good luck, Rex.”

“You too,” Rex says and Squeak takes off with a nod, leaving Rex to take stock of what has become of his life. It’s a room that takes less than ten paces to walk around, with four bunks, a sink, a pot to piss in and blessed little else beyond the crude graffiti on the walls. It’s a soldier’s instinct that has him pacing around the perimeter a couple of times, trying to see if there’s anything else of note, but there isn’t. There’s only that blasted force field, and beyond it, a great fall. If anything happens, he’s helpless, which isn’t a feeling he enjoys but one he’s growing more and more accustomed to as the war draws ever on.

It’s quiet, and still. He cannot hear the cacophony of snoring that only comes from a barracks full of men who have their noses broken one too many times, no quiet footsteps in the hallway as sleepless brothers try to find some peace, no quiet whispers from people who think they’re a lot quieter than they are. There is no glow of a datapad turned down to its lowest brightness in the dark, or the far-off sounds of someone listening to the radio. 

He finds himself wishing with a sudden ache that he spent last night sleeping in the barracks with his men, not writing a report in the self-imposed isolation of his private quarters. He lies down on the hard bed on his back, one knee bent so he can spring into action at any time, just like he’d been taught. He goes through the breathing exercises of his training - meant specifically to control pain, to keep from screaming when injured so that you don’t alert the enemy to your location, but nobody said you could only use it for the one thing - and tries not to focus on how loud his own breathing sounds in this empty place, tries to focus on something resembing peace. He's never been good with idle time, life too filled with distant, dark corners he valiantly tries to steer away from, his mind able to fill up the emptiness with greater ease than he should like. The breathing helps. 

His last thought before falling into a fitful slumber is of Dogma, similarly alone in one of these horrible little cells and hoping beyond reason that the poor kid somehow knows deep down that he’s not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes:  
> \- I have no idea how prisons in Star Wars work, so I've elected to just make up the process rather than comb through every prison in the EU. Sorry if you're a stickler for that sort of thing!  
> \- Squeak's my own creation! I needed a guard clone for Rex to interact with, so Squeak got to pop into existence.  
> \- This is likely the beginning of one of my favourite Rex tendencies: anyone even remotely younger than him is almost immediately deemed kid (or son, or lad, or some other diminutive). I'm pretty sure if he met someone a day younger than him, he would cheerfully seize onto the fact and call him a kid until the day he died. What a dink.
> 
> This chapter's mostly set-up for what's going to honestly be a predominantly dialogue-heavy work, but I hope all of you enjoyed it nonetheless!


	3. General Skywalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the General.

Rex’s paperwork hasn’t even gone through when Skywalker arrives. 

He had known it was coming - the 501st and Rex with them were Skywalker’s, and their General was never shy about letting that fact be known, not that it did them that much good on Umbara - but he still feels a faint shock ripple through his system when he sees Skywalker approach on a hoverplatform, accompanied by a guard he doesn't recognize. 

“Leave us,” Skywalker says as he steps off of the platform, posture poised, jaw clenched, and voice terse. 

“Yessir!”

As the hoverplatform glides away, Rex scrambles to his feet and to attention, keenly aware of the sloppy figure he makes in his prison greys and unshaven state. He feels naked without his uniform, all of his sharp, straight lines blurred without the benefit of well-maintained armour and a helmet to mask any weariness on his face. “General--”

“What the hell is going on here, Rex?!” 

He's furious, Rex realizes, and worse yet, he's not sure why. “It's all in the report, sir. I sent you a copy as well,” he says, keeping his voice carefully neutral, expression as much of a mask as his bucket ever is. 

“And that's another thing! The report! You're never that thorough.”

“I always try to be comprehensive with my reports,” Rex says, a part of him meaninglessly offended despite himself. 

“Not like this.” Rex may be standing at attention, but Skywalker has no such need. He washes his hands in mid-air, too overcome to keep his aggravation inside before sitting down on the bottom bunk, long limbs folding over each other almost comically in a bid to actually fit on the damn thing. Rage on the battlefield always makes Skywalker a devastating, terrifying, inspirational figure, cutting swaths through enemy forces like a force of nature. Rage in a place like this, face to face, always makes Skywalker look impossibly young; that wrinkle of his nose and furrow of his brow looks more suited to a shiny than a seasoned general. Either way, Rex often finds Skywalker’s rage to be an unsettling, unwelcome thing, sometimes felt with such fervor that if Rex could speak freely, he would side with General Kenobi, warn him against allowing it to sweep him away in its path. “I know the way you write, Captain. There was no reason for you to include everything you did. You _wanted_ to get arrested.”

Is that what Skywalker’s upset about? Rex wonders dully. Or is he angry about what happened to his troops? Or what happened to Krell? He can't tell. “Sir,” he says. It's his favourite response in times like these. It can mean everything from _yes, absolutely_ to _I believe that’s a damn silly idea and if you were one of my men I'd tell you off for having shit for brains_ to _I’m half asleep on my feet and tuned out your and Kenobi’s bickering for so long that I didn't hear what you just said_ or, in this case, _I don't know what you're thinking, so if you'd kindly keep talking, I would really appreciate it_.

Thankfully Skywalker seldom needs a good reason to keep talking. “Before you sent that thing off, only Dogma was going to be arrested and you know it!”

“Would that have been preferable to you?” Rex asks quietly, still standing at attention, eyes focused on some spot just a few inches to the right of his general’s face. 

“I - of course it would have!” Skywalker splutters, nonplussed. 

“These men are my responsibility. Including Dogma. I couldn't let him face the music alone, sir. It wouldn't have been right.”

“Dogma being here is - unfortunate. But we need you where you belong, not in a prison cell because of the principle of the thing. The 501st needs their captain. They depend on you.”

“The 501st is a well-oiled machine - they don’t need me to be great. Appo’s a fine soldier. He’ll lead them well in my absence.” It’s not a lie; Rex does hold Appo in high esteem, and no arm of the military functions on the merits of their officer alone, not when they so frequently fall in battle.

“That is not - “ Skywalker pauses, pinches at the bridge of his nose. “I hate it when you do this. At ease, Rex. Just sit down.”

Rex would prefer to stand. He sits down nonetheless, looking a little less stooped as he does so than his General. He doesn’t speak.

“Tell me why you’re _really_ here.”

Rex swallows. “I want to help Dogma. That wasn’t a lie, General. He’s a good soldier and a good man, and he took the shot that, by all rights, I should have been the one to take.”

“But?”

“But this is bigger than that. Dogma might have been the one to take the fall first, sure, but he wasn’t the only one involved. Dogma says one wrong thing, and then all of Torrent Company will be held accountable. It has to be me standing there.”

Skywalker still doesn’t look impressed. Rex can see his jaw working, his brow furrowing as though Rex said something singularly stupid. “So you want to fall on the blade yourself, is that it?”

Rex feels annoyance begin to build in the bottom of his stomach, a hot, burning thing, crawling up his insides and creeping up his throat. He’s not particular given to introspection, making it all the harder to divine whether he’s annoyed at his General or at something else entirely. “No, I want the Senate to _understand_. Getting arrested is the one opportunity for them to have to listen to us. This isn’t just for me, or Dogma, or Torrent Company, or even just the 501st. This is for all of my brothers.”

“Explain.”

“Explain?” Rex’s voice comes out a little louder than he means for it to. “Sir, with - with all due respect, what is there to explain? Dogma should never have been put in that position, because it should have been me pulling that trigger. But I shouldn’t have been put in that position either. No brother should have, because someone should have seen something was wrong long before it ever got to that point. The man had an eighty-percent casualty rate! On your standard, run-of-the-mill operations! _Eighty-percent_! What Jedi worth their salt would walk away with those stats, again and again? If someone thought, just for a moment, about what that statistic means, they would know that something was terribly wrong.” Rex can feel himself breathing heavier than before, eyes wide with agitation, hands curled into fists in his lap.

“Rex--”

“We all understand that death is the cost of war, but not when we’re being thrown away by the dozen. If the Senate sees fit to have debates on whether or not to create more of us, if our forces keep dwindling, maybe they should attend less to churning out new clones and more to keeping the ones they already have, their best resources, alive.” There is a distant, lucid part of Rex staring at the way he rises to his feet and raises his voice to a superior officer, one that does not wholly deserve it, with an abstract sense of dread. _Stop now, you fool,_ that corner of his brain tells him. This kind of talk was unneeded and unasked for and breaking more regulations than he cares to consider. 

The rest of him is angry. Rex’s anger is usually pointed, directed at a single target, a cold, careful thing that powers him forwards on the field, never to be led astray. A useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. This anger gripping him is foreign, a hot, all-encompassing thing that seems to take his steadfast control away from him, doesn’t keep him from straying so much as it leads him down a path he would never willingly walk towards, coerced as he’s been by Slick, by Cut, by Krell. Before, it had been easy to compartmentalize the war to whatever he’s fighting at the time, to Generals Skywalker and Kenobi, to his Company, to Cody, to the stretch of land that they’re marching on and nothing else, skirmish after skirmish, battle after battle. After really considering Krell’s numbers, considering how many others like Krell there may be out there, he suddenly feels the battle in his mind unfolding, not encompassing dozens of his men, but hundreds, _millions_ of brothers in an interminable march towards death, unimaginable and personal all at once. And once he sees it unfold like that, too massive to possibly grasp onto, he cannot see it as anything else. It’s gripped him, and he doesn’t know how to shake free of it.

“Rex-” Skywalker tries to interrupt one more time.

“No,” Rex says, to his quickly mounting horror. “Instead of looking at the eighty-percent casualty rate, they rush new brothers out of their pods and onto battlefields. They don’t bother with the sims, they flash train them and out they go at - hell, eight, nine years old. We ask for soldiers, and they send us _children_ to get themselves and everyone around them killed! Children!” 

“Rex!” Skywalker stands up, jabbing his finger into the middle of Rex’s chest. Rex cannot help but flinch. “I am not your enemy here! It’s time for you to stand down!”

Much to his own relief (and, he suspects, to Skywalker’s relief as well), whatever Rex had to say next dies in his throat.

“Now shut up and tell me what you need to get out of here in one piece!”

Rex gapes. It’s not a particularly flattering expression. “Sir?”

“You heard me,” Skywalker snaps, standing even as Rex slowly sits back down again, ill temper in every tense line of his body.

“I… I need a full list of the 212th’s casualties.”

Skywalker nods sharply. “Next?”

“And I need someone to check on Krell’s battalion. Make sure they’re all right, see what they know. Get them reassigned to squads that’ll know what to do with them, if possible.”

“Anything else?”

Rex hesitates. “That’s all I need. But I’d like to speak with Dogma, if I could.”

“I can’t make any promises - about any of it. But I’ll see what I can do.”

Something in Rex’s chest aches, and he can’t tell if it’s guilt or gratitude. He feels tired suddenly, his earlier rage somehow bleeding out of him, leaving him a smaller man than he’d been moments ago. After all this time, after all of the battles fought by Skywalker’s side, he had still doubted him. “I… apologize for my conduct,” he says stiffly. “It won’t happen again. You’ve always led us with honour and dignity, General, and you didn’t deserve any of that. It’s been…” He allows himself the small weakness of passing his hand over his eyes. “A trying week.”

Skywalker sags back onto the bed across from him. “Have you been taking lessons in expressing yourself from Obi-Wan?” At Rex’s arched brow, he shakes his head, dismissing the matter. “It’s fine, Rex. You’re _right_ \- right about it all.” His lips thin, an aggrieved expression suddenly crossing his face, of the sort that Rex seldom sees. “I’m sorry. I should have been there.” 

“You’re fighting on the front lines with us every day,” Rex says quietly. “You couldn’t have known.”

“The _Council_ \--” Skywalker cuts himself off in mid-sentence, the shake of his head almost savage, the curl of his lip venomous. “If I’d only been there, I would have struck Krell down myself for what he did. You know that, don’t you?” 

Just this once, Rex finds Skywalker’s anger to be a soothing, comforting thing, even as he finds himself lost for words.

“He deserved worse than the clean death Dogma gave him,” Skywalker spits. “And now the two of you are paying for his crimes. It makes me sick.”

“Not everyone would think the same way. We’re lucky to have you.”

Skywalker stops to scrutinize Rex, seeing something there that Rex can’t quite figure out, but he looks troubled. Whatever he sees moves him to reach out, grasping onto Rex’s shoulders with both hands, grasp as firm and certain as ever. “Listen to me. We _will_ fix this. I’m not going to let any of the boys in blue suffer any more because of Krell. You understand me?”

Rex finds himself leaning into the touch like a man starved, allowing himself to take what comfort he can from it. It’s almost startling how reassuring a friendly touch is, how much he had needed it. He breathes, lets it centre him.

“That’s not an answer.”

Rex answers with the military swiftness and surety he always has, just a hint of a tired smile twitching at the corners of his lips. “Yessir!” 

“Good man.” Skywalker squeezes his shoulders, then lets go. “I’ll talk to, uh…” _Senator Amidala,_ Rex’s common sense supplies, though he patiently pretends that he has no idea what Skywalker’s talking about. “Some… people in the Senate. And Obi-Wan.”

“Thank you. Do you understand now? Why it has to be me? Dogma will hardly be able to advocate for himself, let alone point out all the ways this broke down before we even landed on Umbara. One way or another, they have to be told.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I still think this is a stupid way of going about this. But I understand what you’re getting at.”

Skywalker stands up and pushes a button on his wrist, doubtlessly calling for one of the guards to bring the hoverplatform over. As he walks over to the forcefield, he turns to look at Rex behind his shoulder. “Oh, and Rex? That little outburst of yours? It never happened. But it had better not happen again - that or any other trouble you could still get up to while you’re stuck in here. The Senate won’t be as forgiving as me. And even if the 501st doesn’t need you - which is bantha shit, by the way - _I_ need my right-hand man. You got that?”

Rex really does smile this time. “You have my word, General.”

A clone brings the hoverplatform over (and oh, he’s waving at Rex and Skywalker with far too much cheeriness; Rex knows it’s Squeak before he even sees his bucket, fool that he is), and whisks Skywalker away. Rex watches them leave before lying flat on his back atop his bunk, suddenly feeling as weary as though he had just finished a day-long trek.

He’s still in solitary imprisonment, still trapped in this jail cell without anything but uncertainty to his name and lingering regrets about how he had lost his temper but, somehow, he already feels less alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could probably rename this whole thing to "Emotionally Fraught Conversations In Very Small Spaces" because that's more or less what this whole thing is going to be! 
> 
> And, as a note: a big thank you to anyone who's taken the time to leave a comment or a kudos! It absolutely makes my day, especially as I'm stumbling forward with my first fic in this fandom - I'm still figuring out how to write these characters, and it's wonderful to hear whether or not I'm doing them justice.


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